Posted
by
timothyon Tuesday March 25, 2014 @09:31AM
from the why-not-just-petition-with-auras? dept.

Barence (1228440) writes with this excerpt from PC Pro: "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has issued a sharp response to petitioners calling for his site to "allow for true scientific discourse" on holistic healing. The petition, currently running on the Change.org site, claims that much of the information on Wikipedia relating to holistic approaches to healing is "biased, misleading, out of date, or just plain wrong". It has attracted almost 8,000 supporters at the time of publication. Wales's response to the petition, posted on the same page, is far from conciliatory: 'No, you have to be kidding me,' he writes. 'Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn't.'"

I dont know that thats 100% accurate, there are a couple of "legit" "alternative" medicines that we just havent finished studying, but may be proven to be effective. Theyre just generally the minority.

For example, I believe its generally accepted that acupuncture [nih.gov] does something, we're just not sure how and what.

The problem with acupuncture studies is that they can't be done double-blinded: that is, the acupuncturist always knows whether he is doing "real" acupuncture or "sham" acupuncture*. This then leads to a bias effect, in which the patient is unconsciously cued as to whether or not the treatment "should" work, and expectation effects are stronger than any purported acupuncture benefits (e.g., Bausell et al 2005, Eval Health Prof). I remember a study, which I cannot dig up at the moment, in which the researchers gave acting lessons to the acupuncturist to ensure that they behaved in exactly the same way with respect to the patients between real and sham treatments, and when they did so acupuncture did not outdo the placebo.

* You can, in theory, do double-blinded by randomly assigning patients to one of two technicians, both of which were naive to acupuncture treatment before the study's beginning. They are then trained equally on two different sets of acupuncture points, one valid and one invalid, with no knowledge of which one of them is which. However, objectively this isn't really a fair test of acupuncture: consider the case where you tried to tackle the effectiveness of heart surgery using the same model.

Actually the WHO considers acupuncture a valid treatment for pain. I have done acupuncture treatments at several places for chronic back pain and I can tell you that it is NOT the same thing regardless of where or how they are doing the treatments. I only had good outcomes in one of the places I went to. I had done conventional physiotherapy at more than one place to treat the same issue before and I have had WORSE results than with acupuncture. I know several people, including my father, which experienced

i'll give you an example. i once came across a homeopathic product that I could reliably prove worked!

i used to get horrible rash every time i shaved. my dad's quack of a girlfriend gave me some kind of gemmo/homeo-therapeutic oil made from a shoot of a citrus tree diluted gazillion times and then mixed with olive oil to use on my face. it worked and we all lived happily ever after

until i showed her (a week later) that using plain olive oil was 50x cheaper and just as effective.

Then prove it. Show one piece of holistic/homeopathic medicine which does the equivalent of real medicine.

So far, not one has been shown to do anything because it's all the placebo effect which has been demonstrated in numerous studies.

As is always said in these situations, find at least one scientifically rigorous study showing any alternative medicine works. Not what some charlatan like Kevin Trudeau says, not Montel Williams in an informercial, a true scientific study using standardized methods to show any effectiveness of alternative medicine.

Then prove it. Show one piece of holistic/homeopathic medicine which does the equivalent of real medicine.

Willow bark used for minor aches and pains works this is where aspirin was discovered. Quinine came from the bark of another tree and was used to treat fevers and malaria. I am not aware of any studies that show these to be nothing more than a placebo they actually led to some of the real medicine you speak of.

I wouldn't wave my hand and say it's all BS you need to take these study them and if you are lucky you may just find something that can be refined and made more effective... like aspirin.

Willow bark used for minor aches and pains works this is where aspirin was discovered. Quinine came from the bark of another tree and was used to treat fevers and malaria. I am not aware of any studies that show these to be nothing more than a placebo they actually led to some of the real medicine you speak of.

These certainly aren't homeopathic medicine, and I don't think they count as "holistic" either (whatever that means). They're naturally occurring remedies that have been through extensive scientific testing, which means they're simply "medicine". No one, here or anywhere else, is claiming that natural remedies are invalid - we're simply demanding that they be held to the same standard of evidence as other medical treatment.

we're simply demanding that they be held to the same standard of evidence as other medical treatment.

And some of us who believe in science based medicine wish more of modern medicine was held to a higher standard than it is now.

How many remedies have big pharma introduced which have subsequently proven to be disastrous because they either fudged their numbers, or hid the data which indicated that either their stuff didn't work or was dangerous?

Because they rush it to market and want to conceal the risks. And then the advertise directly to consumers with a litany of "this product may kill you" warnings.

That's not medicine, that's big business.

And the problem is we have stuff being used in medicine for which the evidence is actually little better than some of the quackery out there.

The tree-bark studies you use are more along the lines of herbalism than holistic medicine or homeopathy. The yew extracts commonly used in chemotherapy should also be considered here.

This is not just a matter of the fact that they use herbs. They fail homeopathy by not relying on the "memory of water" effect that homeopathy claims to rely on: indeed, homeopaths would be horrified at the doses used. Likewise, holistic medicine is generally quite keen on not introducing foreign substances into the body, which these clearly do.

These aren't the only herbs to be shown effective, either. And when they are shown effective, medicine incorporates them. But a great many herbs have been shown to have no effect at all, or even to cause harm, and science has rejected these, as it should. The resulting dosage tables from these tests bear little resemblance to herbalism as the herbalists tend to think of it.

Essentially, herbalists stumbled onto a couple of patterns, and thought this meant they knew everything. When we put it to the test, we found a few accidental discoveries: it's not unlike the way that alchemists accidentally discovered gunpowder. But the methods the herbalists used were bunk, and a lot of the resulting knowledge was bunk, and even when it wasn't, they turned out to know far less than they thought they did.

Actually herbalist's (the traditional ones') approach was this:They either had heard from some other person that a specific herb worked successfully against a specific sickness, or they tried out herbs against certain ills to see if it worked.When they saw that it worked with one patient, they kept using it with other patients with the same ills or sicknesses. For example, daisy-flower tea was recommended against kidney-stones or to remedy it a bit or so.What the herbalists didn't know though was why it worked. For them, the only thing that counted was the result. If a given herb didn't work with a given illness, they tried a different herb or a combination of many herbs until they either gave up or they saw that it worked. Traditional herbalists (ages ago) actually only kept those herbs (and combinations) in their "portfolio" that reliable delivered the same results with the same/similar sicknesses. If they couldn't replicate the result, they dropped that herb (or combinations) from their "portfolio"...

Thus, the traditional herbalist were in fact using "scientific methods" without knowing that they were using them: Trial -> Result -> Try to Replicate Result -> Communicate to other Herbalists; The other herbalists again: Trial -> Result -> Replicate;

While growing up in a backwater-village in central Turkey in the 1970's, I learned much about herbs and "household remedies" (to reduce the impact of a common cold or to protect wounds becoming infectious, etc). For example: when you're wounded (e.g. while carving a stick or so) by a knife or anything that was not clean, the first thing to do (that I learnt) was to pee on the wound. Nobody knew why it worked, but they knew that that helped against infections... (well, after having gone to school, now I know why it worked...)

Today, I am happy to use "household remedies" (as long as they deliver, reliably, same/similar results for a given situation) as well as "School Medicine" (as it is called). But I would never think of trying to cure an infection with a tea - I'll prefer an anti-biotic, thank you very much (so far, there are no herbal solutions I am aware of against infections, but antibiotics are proven to work...) - in fact, anything that can be scientifically proven is fine with me - whether it herbs, medication, surgery, - I don't care as long as it is proven. And no, homeopathy, "Energy-whatever", or "holistic medicine" (what is it actually) is not my "cup of tea"... (no proof there)

The difference (for me) between scientific and non-scientific approach is very simple:1) Can you reliably reproduce the results under similar conditions but changing at least one parameter (for example with other patients)2) Can third parties reliably reproduce the results under similar conditions but changing at least one parameter (e.g. other patients)

If the answer to both is "YES", then, for heaven's sake use whatever means you come up with to help people. But if either you or other people can't reproduce it under similar conditions, chance is that the result was a "random fluctuation in space-time" and had nothing to do with your "(alternative) medical approach" (or any other approach).

What they used was called "Observational bias" with no null hypothesis, and no trials, nothing blinded, no taking the placebo effect into account.The VAST MAJORITY of what they did, did nothing, A few times they got lucky.

Of course the problem with placebos is that they essentially require lying to the patient. If you are honest and actually tell the patient "it's just a sugar pill" then it's not going to have any affect.

Which is why you get things like homeopathy dressing up placebos in some BS that sounds plausible to the uneducated.

Actually, the "herbal medicine" is NOT "alternative medicine". At least over here in Germany (and most of continental Europe) herbal medicine is a "classical medicine" segment called "Naturheilkunde", which could be translate back as "Medicine using natural ingredients" (i.e. natural grown) instead of "artificially created" ingredients (i.e. lab-generated ingredients).

"Naturheilkunde" is the segment of medicine looking at the healing effects of herbs, teas, fruits, etc. But it still, thankfully, uses scientific approach (Trial->Result->Replicate Result->Communicate; Trial by Third Parties->Replicate by Third Parties->Communicate).

Besides Medicine, there is a huge debate and misconceptions about diets.

We got Vegetarian, Vegan then we go the other ways with diets with a lot of meat.GMO food is either harmless just a quicker form of breading, or it is actually bad. Beyond GMO we got Organic vs traditional farming. Some people say to drink more water, others say we are drinking too much.

Alternative medicines and Diets debates is about justifying to yourself the extra money you are paying. And make you feel special because it seems like

Diets: you know what? I realized long time ago, that the right diet has the following ingredients:

1) A healthy mix of fresh vegetables (a lot), dairy products (some), and proteins (some meat, fish, eggs)2) It tastes good3) I really like eating it4) Lots of water to drinkOne should never underestimate the importance of (2) and (3) above...On top of that, you could add: 5) Exercise.... and its not even much. Walk to shopping, walk through a park/forest. Try not to use your car that often, try using the stairs

As someone who's in fairly good shape and athletic, I have often wondered why people don't follow this simple dictum. In fact, diet is infinitely more important than exercise. And there's a very good reason it's said that six packs are made in the kitchen.

At the end of the day, someone who eats healthy and does not work out is often in better shape than someone who eats junk and "works out" for half hour a day. Most of those people just use their momentum to do some

Meh. That's not really true. There's a reason there's an entire field called evidence-based medicine [wikipedia.org], which from its very name makes it distinct from just plain-old normal "medicine."

There's plenty of hokum peddled by physicians, too. Lots of clinical decisions are based on "gut feelings" and tradition. And let's not even get into the multitude of embarrassing medical debates where various new drugs or foods or practices were widely accepted and then shown to be even more harmful than the things they replaced (which were originally thought to be harmful or unhealthy).

Spend some time sifting through all of the research on some medical topic at some point, and it quickly becomes clear that lots of medical conclusions are based on studies with serious flaws (either methodological or statistical), which is why you end up getting the "X is bad for you! Don't do/eat/use X!" one year and "X is good for you! Do it all the time!" the next year crap.

Don't get me wrong -- medical research is hard. Human bodies are very complex systems. And the kind of blind randomized studies necessary to evaluate medical practices (particularly "accepted" practices, which are assumed to already work) are often (1) expensive, (2) potentially unethical, since they might involve denying someone treatment that is assumed to be necessary for good health and/or exposing people to dangerous practices, (3) really difficult to control for all potential variables. And even if you managed to construct some sort of artificial laboratory situation where you could really isolate a variable, it may have questionable real-world applicability once the subjects head back out into the messiness of real life.

It doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and give up, but there is significant room for improvement in everyday "medicine," based on things that are ACTUALLY proven to work, hence "evidence-based" medicine.

"There's plenty of hokum peddled by physicians, too. "true, but it's not medicine. And Dr. should lose there license when the peddle that crap.

" which is why you end up getting the "X is bad for you! Don't do/eat/use X!" "nope. You get that because the media reports on 1 study when they think that 1 study will get viewers. They never look at the body of research. That's for most of it.

The other part of that is science learns something unexpected and the previous 'bad' for you' statement becomes more nuanced.

nope. You get that because the media reports on 1 study when they think that 1 study will get viewers. They never look at the body of research. That's for most of it.

I don't know what your background is, but I've spent time reading lots of actual research studies in some of the major medical debates, and I can assure you that there are plenty of situations where there's lots of crap in published journals too, which gives rise to this media attention. And a lot of those studies make all sorts of claims in their discussion sections, hoping to get attention -- "body of research" be damned.

âoeAnti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'â

While a true statement about how anti-intellectualism works, good ideas need to be challenged sometimes by bad ideas, to help find their weaknesses and become (or be replaced by) better ideas. This is the true fundamental value of free speech. Not every challenge needs to come from someone who is smarter and better informed than you. Never underestimate the value of being wrong in the right way at the right time and place.

There is an excellent book [amazon.com] on this very topic. It goes into the history of American crankery, and explains how important it was, but that the situation is different now. Read it. It's funny, and sometimes rather disturbing.

Yes, it's good for good ideas to be challenged by a bad idea now and then.

The problem is that a good idea challenged by a bad idea, a discussion occurs, evidence is presented, bad idea is shown to be a bad idea, and good idea is vindicated. And then 5 minutes later the same bad idea is presented. And then 5 minutes after that, the same bad idea is trotted out. And then five minutes after that, again. And again. And again. And again.

The problem is that a good idea challenged by a bad idea, a discussion occurs, evidence is presented, bad idea is shown to be a bad idea, and good idea is vindicated. And then 5 minutes later the same bad idea is presented. And then 5 minutes after that, the same bad idea is trotted out. And then five minutes after that, again. And again. And again. And again.

That's the trouble with you so-called skeptics. You refuse to listen to the alternatives after only debunking them 100 times. What if the 101st minor

I have a different view. I would argue that there is an increase in the quantity and quality of medical science. This is increasingly pushing old fashioned ideas, anecdotes and so forth, out of discussions. In turn making those that hold on to outdated ideas more obvious. My worry is that those involved with good science, rather than being stoical and professional, forever searching for truth also become hysterical and shouty. I don't think that would help anyone.

But mr. Wales attempt to raise the bar is welcome, it's just not very easy to do it. As long as Wikipedia is as open in its nature as it is now, it will always remain something of a rogue place for opinions vs real scientific facts.

Wikipedia has also been accused with moderators treating it like it was their private domain, and the older more established moderators reign superior over the wannabees, so much so - I've given up any attempt to add anything to the site, as it's usually futile, even if peer reviewed and fully documented (no, not talking about oogey boogey science with crystal healing and all that jazz), but down to earth - time proven, document-able peer reviewed facts.

I think the entire Wikipedia needs to be reviewed, cleaned up and get a better moderation system

On a Swedish now defunct website for political discussion there used to hang out a Crazy radical feminist woman who had a Universal Theory of science.

In her opinion, it was impossible to say what is science and what is not and as such nobody has the power to say that something is scientific and something else isn't. To her, everything is scientific and the people who disagree are proponents of "scientism".

This tied in with the radical feminist angle because she also argued that science as it currently exists has been overtaken by men and now serves only male and masculine purposes such as technology and weapons. She elaborates that male science is destructive because it picks things apart to understand how they work and it creates destructive inventions.

She says that female science, by contrast, does not pick anything apart. Instead it would look at things and examine them as a whole, and come to answers using hermeneutic analysis. (hint: it means you sit around and talk about it for a long time)

Her ultimate point is that she believes it is not right to call something non-scientific simply because it cannot be empirically tested.

She also got into weird and ultimately bizarre postmodernist arguments such as if someone believed a partcular treatment actually helped them, then the treatment was effective. She was strongly pro-homeopathy, crystal healing and whatever.

The charlatans are taking the argument to the wrong place, on purpose. Wales comment is spot-on. Get your results published in scientific journals and they will be noted in Wikipedia. Regardless of your opinion about the management of Wikipedia, it is trying to be an encyclopedia, of sorts. As such, it is NOT the place where scientific discourse takes place. That is elsewhere. Once the scientific discourse happens and the scientists come up with some settled science, THEN the encyclopedia will summarize it.

The trouble is people who believe in alternative medicine (holistic, naturopathy, reiki, chiro etc.) think their claims are exempt from the standard of proof that applies to conventional medicine. i.e. that it be demonstrated that the outcome of a treatment is better than a placebo.

Demand evidence of this (e.g. double blinded studies) and they'll provide anecdotes. If you go to the effort of explaining why anecdotes are weak evidence and prone to confirmation bias, you'll get increasingly bizarre and unconvincing explanations why the scientific method cannot possibly test these claims. Push hard enough and inevitably the response turns into a big rant about the FDA and big pharma, about how they kill people, are suppressing natural cures etc. What you won't get at any stage is actual evidence to support their claims.

I often practice Voodoo to rid myself of evil spirits. Wikipedia has been very biased against all the scientific research of the efficacy of voodoo for such purposes. (I challenge you to scientifically prove that I have any evil spirits [anymore]).

Asteroid strike, nuclear war, conventional war for that matter, rampant disease, runaway GMO's, global warming, etc.. these are not what will destroy the human race. Willful ignorance is what will, along with it's partners, superstition and religion. More and more it seems people are rejecting the last thousand years or so of progress and turning back to these things. The Human race is in danger of falling in a new Dark Age if this keeps up.

When it's considered perfectly normal to be an "anarcho-primitivist" or "radical environmentalist", as it is to be religion, or if they numbered in the billions, you'd have a point. But as that's not the case, you don't. Not even close. Stop trying to make excuses - it's sad. Religion is dangerous, and people realise that.

"No, you have to be kidding me. Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful.

Wikipedia's policies around this kind of thing are exactly spot-on and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals - that is to say, if you can produce evidence through replicable scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately.

What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of "true scientific discourse". It isn't." - Wales

Personally, my father is a professor researching the effectiveness of 'alternative medicine', specifically massage & chiropractic techniques for back pain versus pain killers. His research has shown it's effective for back pain, but it's still called alternative medicine right now. What it won't do is cure cancer. And this petition is for 'energy work', which I find very unlikely to be any more successful than a placebo.

Personally, my father is a professor researching the effectiveness of 'alternative medicine', specifically massage & chiropractic techniques for back pain versus pain killers. His research has shown it's effective for back pain, but it's still called alternative medicine right now. What it won't do is cure cancer.

I go to a chiropractor for neck & back issues. I typically go once or twice a month, though I haven't been for a couple of months due to working extra jobs. It does wonders for getting kinks out & un-pinching nerves. I have some trouble spots that feel much better after an adjustment. I think where chiropractic gets into trouble is with some of their other claims, like helping allergies, etc. I have allergies too, and as far as I can tell, chiropractic has never done anything to help them. I think t

I suspect it means is that alternative medicine proponents want to strip [citation needed] from statements of fact in AM-related articles and strip contradictory statements and refutations from AM-related articles so they read as more statements of truth than as unproven, questionable or in doubt.

I haven't read any AM articles, but given the wide variety of information in Wikipedia, it would seem unlikely they're just outright removing AM articles. I mean, the point of WP isn't that everything in it is verifiably true, but there is information about things even if the things themselves are false.

'Every single person who signed this petition needs to go back to check their premises and think harder about what it means to be honest, factual, truthful. What we won't do is pretend that the work of lunatic charlatans is the equivalent of 'true scientific discourse'. It isn't.'"

It is noteworthy that Wales is not arguing for excluding pseudoscience from Wikipedia on the basis of Wikipedia's own guidelines. According to Wikipedia itself, status as pseudoscience is not a criterion for exclusion from Wikipedia. Rather,the criterion for acceptance is NPOV [wikipedia.org]. Wikipedia's guidelines permit dishonest, fictitious and untruthful content so long as it is NPOV.

Because the rules of Wikipedia would allow the inclusion pseudoscience this is a "gotcha" for Wales, revealing a fundamental limit in Wikipedia: With NPOV, the contents of Wikipedia can never be more veridical than is the social consensus. A purportedly objective guideline which immediately reduces to subjective value judgments, NPOV is a ruse; What constitutes "Significant views," or "reliable sources on a topic" is in the eye of the beholder. Or, as Wales would have it in this case, whatever he says they are.

Wikipedia was an unexpected success because the popular expectation, a priori, was that if you just let anyone edit an encyclopedia then predominantly non-experts would contribute falsehoods. A posteriori, after Wikipedia had actually worked, the reasoning about why it had was that it was unexpectedly accurate because, well, experts are really not so good at getting stuff right anyway, and maybe spontaneous social organization really does work better than structured regulation and those dead Austrian economists and their crazy Libertarian fan club might actually have been right about something.

Though perhaps the secret to Wikipedia's success is not really that open encyclopedias are unexpectedly accurate, but rather that accuracy is not, as had been assumed, paramount. Rather, it is the appearance of accuracy which is essential for success. NPOV is a codification of a strategy for creating the popular appearance of accuracy without achieving genuine accuracy. Wikipedia is winning the encyclopedia contest by gaming the system. It matched the same flawed criterion function for accuracy as used by its customers, the test of asking: "is this what respectable people believe?" So now Wales has the problem that, according to the very rules of Wikipedia which have been the recipe for its success, it must permit pseudoscientific content which is popularly believed. This explains why Wales can shoot that down only outside of Wikipedia's own guidelines.

Some here have posted that it's incumbent upon the alternative folks to prove their cases. While in a perfect world, that may be the case, but some of this crap has already found its way into hospitals, and insurance plans. So, we're already paying for it.

Quick example... My wife recently had elective surgery, and spent two days in one of the best hospitals in Virginia. One of the nurses came by, and offered to do something she called "healing touch". My wife initially declined, but once told there would be no charge, she accepted. She later told me that she accepted it only as a nice gesture, and while it felt nice, she didn't believe it did anything, but might have a placebo effect for some. My own mother-in-law (a former nurse), when told about this, said she believed in it...sigh.

The wiki and the internet in general is by nature susceptible to plagarism , misinformation and the etc. The balancing factor is the presence of a relatively few knowledgeable individuals who keep check on malicious activity. Any open forum is and will be susceptible to manipulation for and by vested interests.

Considering the quality of the articles being used to debunk some of those techniques, I think they're well within their rights to point out the hypocracy of the situation. Just beause people don't believe in holistic healing, doesn't mean that the standards should be lower.

Yes, there is a burden of proof on the holistic healers to prove their case, but that doesn't make it OK to misrepresent and generaly put up information that's known to be inaccurate as a method of debunking it. Debunking should be done on the basis of science, not on the basis of misleading, out of date or incorrect information. Give them the best platform you can and let them fail on their own lack of merit. Doing anything else just reinforces the notion that there's a conspiracy against them.

. Just beause people don't believe in holistic healing, doesn't mean that the standards should be lower.

Yes, there is a burden of proof on the holistic healers to prove their case, but that doesn't make it OK to misrepresent and generaly put up information that's known to be inaccurate as a method of debunking it

This! This is why there were intelligent people on both sides of the evolution "debate" for so long, until the talk.origins FAQ matured (now there's really no excuse). So much BS and known false crap was taught in high school science classes and would turn up in casual searches back when the internet was young, that it was quite easy for someone from a religious background to assume that "evil-ution" was some big scam.

It's only because of the many people on talk.origins who respected the other side as intelligent people, and listened to their arguments that real debunking of the creationist position happened. It turned out that what many people had been taught about evolution (and still are!) was in fact wrong, and they were right to be skeptical of evolution based on what they had been taught. Once some intelligent, adult debate happened back on the place we don't speak of (unsurprisingly, it took a while), people realized that what they really needed to debunk was "bad high school-taught evolution myths", and 99% of skeptics would be convinced by explaining the actual science. (You wouldn't believe some of the BS taught in schools in the US South, apparently sincerely, as the science of evolution.)

For Holistic Nonsense there's a different problem. I don't know what it is, but you can bet there's some equally non-obvious fundamental misunderstandings at work here, and the only way to convince believers in that BS is to understand why they believe it, and address the root of that belief in places like Wikipedia. Calling them stupid won't convince anyone.

That doesn't demonstrate that it's all about the money. Some preachers know that they're selling BS, others actually believe their derp. I think Ham is an emotional thinker, and actually believes the nonsense he spouts.

He seems to have "believed" a lot of things where it's convenient and then suddenly not believed them when it's looked like he may get into trouble. Take his backflip on his cure of AIDS for example.When he's not running an "angle" he's for hire. If the "Arthur Daly" character in fiction had been as ridiculous as Monckton is in reality the writers would have been asked to tone it done and make it more believable.

I think you've got Monckton wrong. He's probably very fun and personable and nice, and almost certainly values integrity and ethics. He's also stark raving mad. That doesn't mean he's for hire. I'm sure he sees himself as terribly important, and doing very important work to save the world. It's all just a little bit psychotic. Or a lot. I don't think money has much to do with this particular case.

The placebo effect doesn't cure anyone of anything.It may allow them to feel better. The strength and length of the 'feeling better' will be determined by a lot of factors.It SEEMS, based on research, that when you have a problem your brain keeps alerting you with an increased awareness of a pain. Once you have done 'something' the brain ignores the pain for a little while.That was a very small nutshell. There are some interesting neurological papers and blogs on the topic.

I disagree. Placebo effects do cure people. Just because a symptom is subjective does not mean it is not real.

If I have a subjective symptom like pain, take some placebo pills, placebo acupuncture, et cetera, and I feel better, then to some degree I have "cured" the pain. People will often dismiss it as saying, "it's all in your head", but so is all pain and many subjective symptoms. Many legitimate pain relievers work on your brain.

The whole reason the FDA demands to test medicine designed to treat sub

In this study, however, docs told patients they were getting placebos. Eighty patients with irritable bowel syndrome were instructed to take two sugar pills daily. The bottle even had "placebo" printed on it. After three weeks, 60 percent of the placebo group reported relief from symptoms, compared to 35 percent who’d received no treatment at all.

Most of the information on Wikipedia is "biased, misleading, out of date, or just plain wrong."

Based on.. what? Your comment seems biased and misleading and could possibly be just plain wrong. Is your comment just based on your personal impression? Have you actually gone through and examined most of all the content available on Wikipedia? No? Well, gee.

Even worse, most of it is plagiarized, drawing eyes away from the books, smaller sites and other sources that produced it.

And yet, while doing that it makes it much more easier to find both the sources and relevant information. If Wikipedia didn't exist finding all that information would be a major hassle, especially considering a lot of the sources mentioned are behind various paywalls, only available in physical forms or whatnot.

Decentralized information is extremely hard to access quickly. Wikipedia not only makes it incredibly easy to get a 20,000 ft view of just about any topic, but they cite a lot of their sources so that if you want the deep down on the topic you can access the sources for more info.

And the claim that Wikipedia "controls" anything except for their little piece of the playground is absurd. You're free to start an alternative wiki-- there are already zillions-- just dont think you're entitled to be popular.

Wikipedia is good for well-researched information. Information about pharmaceutical drugs, neuroscience, exercise, biology, physics, mathematics, animals, cosmology, etc. is usually pretty straight. Information about religion, spirituality, and so on is usually also well-researched.

When you get into practical alternative theory--not just spirituality systems, but applications of alternative medicine, spiritual healing, and so on--you start to get into the weird stuff. Wikipedia tries to distance itself from un-scientific claims: they'll tell you that meditation has been shown to induce calm and give people control over their blood pressure (biofeedback has been shown in controlled studies to allow for control over heart rate and blood pressure), but provide a cultural context for claims about having visions of the future or pulling energy from the spiritual realm or whatever.

The problem comes when it's hard to separate out pseudoscience from real science. Dietary supplements and alternative medical procedures get elbow-deep in this: acupuncture does not, as far as we have ascertained, do anything by balancing Xi; but some studies have shown that acupuncture is effective for treating certain minor nervous conditions or whatnot. Other studies debunk this. Explanation may lie in placebo effect. And so on. Now what? Never mind when you have things like whether or not a certain vitamin or concentrated extract of a given root does anything--milk thistle extract is actually used to treat liver damage, and Valerian acts like benzos, but will walnuts prevent cancer? We change our minds on the walnut thing every other week.

Awareness is useful. Knowing that some people believe meditation can increase physical stamina, for example, can be useful: when there's nothing else left, you may as well sit down and start chanting to yourself. I mean if you're trapped under a collapsed building, why the hell not? Rescue's going to come either way (or not), and maybe you'll slow your metabolism and last a few more hours, or at least amuse yourself. On the other hand, it's probably good to know that this mushroom that people think has special healing properties is viciously poisonous, so you shouldn't try eating it.

On the other hand, you have the realm of vitamins and other alternative treatments which may not necessarily be shown to be effective in FDA-approved studies, but seem to offer genuine anecdotal evidence to their benefits..

And being crappy evidence is enough reason to dismiss in the realm of medicine, since there are dangers inherent to the field.

You haven't been paying attention to the scope of medical research recently have you? While there are some useful studies, much of medical science recently has been about either overdosing rats on something to 'prove' that it's dangerous, or data mining through previous records of patient information to try to assert universal truths from the 4 subjects that fit whatever detail is relevant. The biggest source of actual testing is done by pharmaceutical companies trying to prove that their new random chemi

I think there are two problems, the first being the press does not understand science - and hence run stories about wine being great for you without the understanding that the chemical mentioned is present in such minute quantities as to be irrelevant.

The second issue is that a lot of the public (and hence the press) does not differentiate between proper research and published books or perceived authorities (fuck you Dr Oz and Dr Phil) espousing bullshit.

It seems like the happy medium would be to just stick these things in the category of "Unproven Quackery" and be done with it.

Wikipedia DOES already have topics like Energy Medicine [wikipedia.org], from which I excerpt:

Early reviews of the scientific literature on energy healing were equivocal and recommended further research,[9][10] but more recent reviews have concluded that there is no evidence supporting clinical efficacy....

Edzard Ernst, lately Professor of Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the University of Exeter, has warned that "healing continues to be promoted despite the absence of biological plausibility or convincing clinical evidence... that these methods work therapeutically and plenty to demonstrate that they do not."[13] Some claims of those purveying "energy medicine" devices are known to be fraudulent[29] and their marketing practices have drawn law-enforcement action in the U.S.[29]

So it's not like this stuff is taboo on Wikipedia. But the snake-oil salesman don't want wikipedia to say the truth about it. Think what a huge disservice wikipedia would be doing to people who might turn to it for information if wikipedia didn't stick to its guns.

Not really. Placebo - effect, indeed, is well-known and it does have tangible effect, but these people are claiming their products or methods actually work, not that they have a working placebo - effect. I mean, it would be entirely different thing if these people just wanted their products and/or methods to be listed under things that are known to have a placebo - effect. Besides, almost anything can have such an effect if you just believe it to have an effect -- should we then allow anything and everything to be listed as medicine?

Research clearly indicates that fake therapies can trigger the body to heal itself. In acupuncture studies, sham needling often has very high efficacy, some times higher than needling the proper points, and sometimes similar or higher efficacy than traditional medicine. It does this with far less side-effects. If it works better with less harm, it should be used - even if we don't understand it.

Medicine is a practice. There are many things modern medicine does not understand. Physicians often follow a treatment path without understanding the underlying mechanisms of the disease (e.g. autoimmune disorders) or treat to simply alleviate symptoms. Someday we may have the body figured out but that day is a not today.

The Placebo effect is probably one of the more powerful tools available.

From the NY Times:In the study, published in the May 4 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, German researchers divided 302 migraine sufferers into three groups. The patients were told that one group would receive acupuncture "similar to the acupuncture treatment used in China," and that the second would receive a type of acupuncture that did not follow the Chinese principles but "has been associated with positive outcomes in clinical studies."

The patients did not know which group they were assigned to. A third group was put on a waiting list and received treatment later.

Although the patients in the second group were unaware of it, they received a faked version of acupuncture.

The treatments went on for 12 weeks, and success was defined as having 50 percent fewer days with headaches in the weeks after the end of treatment.

By this measure, real acupuncture succeeded with 51 percent of the patients, and the sham procedure succeeded with 53 percent, a statistically insignificant difference. Only 15 percent of the waiting list group attained the 50 percent reduction in headache days.

The effectiveness of both the sham and the real acupuncture, the authors write, is about the same as treatment with drugs and has fewer side effects. The results, they conclude, "may be due to nonspecific physiological effects of needling, to a powerful placebo effect, or to a combination of both."